This book explores the deep, imaginative, and creative power of poetry as part of the human experience. How poetry provides insight into human psychology is a question at the beginning of its theoretical development, and is a constant challenge for cultural psychologists and the humanities alike.

Section I. Poetic Resources as Tools to Make Meaning.- Chapter 1. A liaison of poetry and tattoos: The multivoicedness in Edgar Allan Poe's poem “The Raven”.- Chapter 2. Beauty of the Back.- Chapter 3. Poetry In and For Society: Poetic Messages, Creativity, and Social Change.- Chapter 4. The Poetics Within Performance Art: The Developmental Nature Of Artistic Creative Processes.- Chapter 5. Commentary: Poesis and Imagination.- Section II. The Poetic Roots of Creativity and Imagination.- Chapter 6. Living Against and Persistence of Being: Poetic Sharing of Being Sensitive Within Antagonistic Worlds.- Chapter 7. Rimbauding Worlds: Creation of Deranging Senses.- Chapter 8. Living in Verse: Sites of the Poetic Imagination.- Chapter 9. Apprehending beauty: Ordinary people’s experiences of the ‘poetic instant’ in India.- Chapter 10. “The Tune Without The Words”: Dickinson`s Verses In a Jazz Ensemble: A Case Study on The Poetics of Music and The Musicality of Poetry.- Chapter 11. Commentary: On poetics, art and life.- Section III. The poetics of daily life.- Chapter 12. Imagined Sea.- Chapter 13. Living with "Encantados": Dances of poet and scientist within the self.- Chapter 14. Poetic gestures of life.- Chapter 15. Dialogue as poetic imagination in the Way of Tea.- Chapter 16. Commentary: The Poetics of Daily Life: The Invisible Becomes Visible.- Chapter 17. Conclusive Remarks: Writing Toward the Core—Poetically Framing a Science of Cultural Psychology

This book explores the deep, imaginative, and creative power of poetry as part of the human experience.  How poetry provides insight into human psychology is a question at the beginning of its theoretical development, and is a constant challenge for cultural psychologists and the humanities alike. Poetry functions, in all ages and cultures, as a rite that merges the beauty, truth and the unbearable conditions of existence.  Both the general and the particular can be found in its expression.  Collectively the authors aim to evoke a holistic understanding of what poetry conveys about decision making and the human search for meaning. This ground-breaking collection will be indispensable to scholars of clinical and theoretical psychology, philosophy, anthropology, literature, aesthetics and sociology.

“This book is an extraordinary achievement: Written and edited by scholars from every corner of the world who stage a meeting of poetry and the human mind. Poetry is depicted as much more than lyrical words in books, for there is a poetic of our lives that is absolutely fundamental, but which the sciences of the mind have ignored all too often. With this excellent collection it is time to put poetics at the center stage of our understanding of psychology and related disciplines.” (Professor Svend Brinkman, Knowledge Group Manager, Department of Communication & Psychology, Aalborg University, Denmark) “This exciting volume takes readers on a fascinating cross-disciplinary journey across multiple fields, including psychological science, literary studies, and cultural studies. I highly recommend this journey!” (Fathali M. Moghaddam, Professor and Director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science, Georgetown University, USA)

Brings together international scholars from the fields of psychology, creativity and literature Looks into the challenging question of how the arts and poetry in particular is used in human decision making and our search for meaning Focuses on contemporary challenges in these areas